Families Coping with Mental Illness

When someone develops a mental illness, the impact on the family is often profound. The most common treatment processes, however, focus on the patient while the loved ones are relegated to subordinate roles and sometimes even viewed as barriers to effective recovery. Families Coping with Mental Illness approaches these issues from the family's perspective, studying how they react to initial diagnosis, adjust to new circumstances, and cope with the situation.Through her own original research in the United States and Japan, Kawanishi presents a cross-cultural experience of mental illness that examine both psychological and sociological issues, making this book suitable to all international fields engaging with diversity and mental health. Including first-hand accounts along with analysis and discussion, Kawanishi gives voice to family members and adeptly identifies universal themes of resilience, adaptability, and strength of the family unit. This innovative text offers a unique viewpoint that will appeal to a wide audience of professionals and non-professionals from a variety of backgrounds.

'Families Coping with Mental Illness provides an intimate, compassionate glimpse into the lives of families struggling and learning how to manage a mental illness in a family member' - Kim T. Mueser, Ph.D, Professor of Psychiatry and Community and Family Medicine, Dartmouth Medical School, USA'This is an unusual, indeed unique, book. Families affected with schizophrenia or other severe mental illness will find this well-written and thoroughly engaging book extremely helpful in their own attempts to cope.' - E. Fuller Torrey, M.D, Associate Director for Laboratory Research, The Stanley Medical Institute, USA, 'Families Coping with Mental Illness provides an intimate, compassionate glimpse into the lives of families struggling and learning how to manage a mental illness in a family member' - Kim T. Mueser, Ph.D, Professor of Psychiatry and Community and Family Medicine, Dartmouth Medical School, USA'This is an unusual, indeed unique, book. Families affected with schizophrenia or other severe mental illness will find this well-written and thoroughly engaging book extremely helpful in their own attempts to cope.' - E. Fuller Torrey, M.D, Associate Director for Laboratory Research, The Stanley Medical Institute, USA

Yuko Kawanishi, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at the International Student Exchange Center, Tokyo Gakugei University, Assistant Professor of Sociology, Temple University (Japan), and an Affiliated Scholar, East Asian Studies Center, University of Southern California. After receiving her Ph.D. in sociology from UCLA in 1993, Dr. Kawanishi researched and traveled in the United States and Japan.